Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In a preceding Special Issue dedicated to “Information-Processing and Embodied, Embedded, Enactive Cognition” (Part 1), we presented the current state-of-the-art of the modeling of cognition and the role of computational, embodied, embedded and enactive approaches. We investigated possibilities for reconciliation of controversies regarding the nature of cognition and the question of its adequate modeling.

In this Special Issue, we focus on the fundamental morphological computational processes of the interaction of a cognitive agent with the world. Computation in general is considered to be information processing, and it takes place on a variety of levels of organization in a cognitive architecture. Studying computation, including morphological computing, entails studying information dynamics [1,2].

Morphological computing, at its core, entails that the morphology (shape and material properties) of an agent (a living organism or a machine) both enables and constrains its possible interactions with the environment, as well as its development, including its growth and reconfiguration. Such physical computation within cognitive systems includes the off-loading of the control onto the body and its interaction within the environment, thus enabling flexible and adaptive behavior [3–7]. Within the morphological computing perspective, a process of information self-structuring, according to interactive constraints, is considered critical to the emergence of process and function in cognitive systems across evolutionary and developmental timescales [1,2,6–8].

The nature of morphological computing has been investigated within a number of different frameworks, such as info-computationalism (where the world for an agent is an informational structure with dynamics that can be described as natural computation). This approach is also called natural computationalism when the focus is on the type of computations, and all of nature forms a network of computational processes [2]. Specific areas related to the morphological computation have also been investigated within neuro-morphological computing, embodiment and development, and social and affective interaction. [11].

So-called embodied cognition holds that cognition is grounded in environmental interactions in the world and is invisible in a classical symbolic representation accounts of cognitive function, which is modeled on human ‘thinking’ or ‘mentality’. However, modern computational perspectives on cognition, such as natural computation (including info-computation), account for embodiment, whereby cognitive processes are considered to emerge from interactions in the world.

Cyber–physical systems integrate computation, networking, and physical processes, and in cases of computation understood as natural computation in cognizing agents and networking interactions between agents, cognitive agents can be understood as cyber–physical systems. Such systems are already being developed as a combination of the existing technologies, often as a continuation of embedded systems approaches. However, the concept offers much more possibilities that can be developed by transcending the limitations and drawbacks of the present-day computer technologies, such as energy and material consumption issues, lack of resilience, speed, and smooth adaptation to a variety of new fields like life sciences and medicine, nano-technology and bioinformatics, and new production and transportation technologies. New computational approaches can also make technological systems less rigid and more human-friendly, such as in the field of soft-robotics and cognitive computing. In order to address these new challenges, there is a need for new unconventional approaches to computing, such as physical computing, natural computing, embodied cognitive computing, and morphological computing (where a morphology of a physical systems computes or processes information or, in the case of robotics morphology, is used for learning and bodily control).

The Special Issue brings together researchers from both theory-driven and application-driven emerging approaches to computation and embodiment, who address theoretical positions concerning morphological and embodied computation, as well as practical applications and foundations for new technologies.

Submissions

We invite contributions addressing morphological computing and cognitive agency. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com, by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted up until the deadline. All of the papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles, and short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except for conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for the submission of manuscripts is available on the instructions for authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

How do living organisms decide and act with limited and uncertain information? Here, we discuss two computational approaches to solving these challenging problems: a “cognitive” and a “sensorimotor” enrichment of stimuli, respectively. In both approaches, the key notion is that agents can strategically
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How do living organisms decide and act with limited and uncertain information? Here, we discuss two computational approaches to solving these challenging problems: a “cognitive” and a “sensorimotor” enrichment of stimuli, respectively. In both approaches, the key notion is that agents can strategically modulate their behavior in informative ways, e.g., to disambiguate amongst alternative hypotheses or to favor the perception of stimuli providing the information necessary to later act appropriately. We discuss how, despite their differences, both approaches appeal to the notion that actions must obey both epistemic (i.e., information-gathering or uncertainty-reducing) and pragmatic (i.e., goal- or reward-maximizing) imperatives and balance them. Our computationally-guided analysis reveals that epistemic behavior is fundamental to understanding several facets of cognitive processing, including perception, decision making, and social interaction.
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The purpose of this paper is to argue against the claim that morphological computation is substantially different from other kinds of physical computation. I show that some (but not all) purported cases of morphological computation do not count as specifically computational, and that
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The purpose of this paper is to argue against the claim that morphological computation is substantially different from other kinds of physical computation. I show that some (but not all) purported cases of morphological computation do not count as specifically computational, and that those that do are solely physical computational systems. These latter cases are not, however, specific enough: all computational systems, not only morphological ones, may (and sometimes should) be studied in various ways, including their energy efficiency, cost, reliability, and durability. Second, I critically analyze the notion of “offloading” computation to the morphology of an agent or robot, by showing that, literally, computation is sometimes not offloaded but simply avoided. Third, I point out that while the morphology of any agent is indicative of the environment that it is adapted to, or informative about that environment, it does not follow that every agent has access to its morphology as the model of its environment.
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Entropy in workplaces is situated amidst workers and their work. In this paper, findings are reported from a study encompassing psychomotor work by three types of workers: human, cyborg and robot; together with three aspects of psychomotor work: setting, composition and uncertainty. The
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Entropy in workplaces is situated amidst workers and their work. In this paper, findings are reported from a study encompassing psychomotor work by three types of workers: human, cyborg and robot; together with three aspects of psychomotor work: setting, composition and uncertainty. The Principle of Least Psychomotor Action (PLPA) is introduced and modelled in terms of situated entropy. PLPA is founded upon the Principle of Least Action. Situated entropy modelling of PLPA is informed by theoretical studies concerned with connections between information theory and thermodynamics. Four contributions are provided in this paper. First, the situated entropy of PLPA is modelled in terms of positioning, performing and perfecting psychomotor skills. Second, with regard to workers, PLPA is related to the state-of-the-art in human, cyborg and robot psychomotor skills. Third, with regard to work, situated entropy is related to engineering of work settings, work composition and work uncertainty. Fourth, PLPA and modelling situated entropy are related to debate about the future of work. Overall, modelling situated entropy is introduced as a means of objectively modelling relative potential of humans, cyborgs, and robots to carry out work with least action. This can introduce greater objectivity into debates about the future of work.
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Eco-cognitive computationalism sees computation in context, exploiting the ideas developed in those projects that have originated the recent views on embodied, situated, and distributed cognition. Turing’s original intellectual perspective has already clearly depicted the evolutionary emergence in humans of information, meaning, and of
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Eco-cognitive computationalism sees computation in context, exploiting the ideas developed in those projects that have originated the recent views on embodied, situated, and distributed cognition. Turing’s original intellectual perspective has already clearly depicted the evolutionary emergence in humans of information, meaning, and of the first rudimentary forms of cognition, as the result of a complex interplay and simultaneous coevolution, in time, of the states of brain/mind, body, and external environment. This cognitive process played a fundamental heuristic role in Turing’s invention of the universal logical computing machine. It is by extending this eco-cognitive perspective that we can see that the recent emphasis on the simplification of cognitive and motor tasks generated in organic agents by morphological aspects implies the construction of appropriate “mimetic bodies”, able to render the accompanied computation simpler, according to a general appeal to the “simplexity” of animal embodied cognition. I hope it will become clear that eco-cognitive computationalism does not aim at furnishing a final and stable definition of the concept of computation, such as a textbook or a different epistemological approach could provide: I intend to take into account the historical and dynamical character of the concept, to propose an intellectual framework that depicts how we can understand not only the change of its meaning, but also the “emergence” of new forms of computations.
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